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Acne Studios Goes Back to the ’90s

The Swedish brand is releasing a line of jeans that revisits their original mid-’90s silhouettes.

It may be easy to forget now, but the Swedish powerhouse fashion brand Acne Studios, beloved purveyor of wacky Northern European weirdness, launched into fashion in the mid-’90s almost accidentally, as a creative agency that happened to make a great pair of jeans. Co-founder and creative director Jonny Johansson wanted to start with an iconic piece: When you’re launching a brand, he told The Guardian in 2013, “You might as well try to do Coca-Cola or you're going about it the wrong way.” So back in 1996 and 1997, they made 100 pairs of low-key, straight-leg jeans and sent them to friends around Stockholm. Then Wallpaper and French Vogue wanted to shoot them, and then this little jeans project suddenly launched them into much, much bigger things. (Don’t forget that this was the brand that made us all rethink pink!)

Now Acne—an acronym for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions, BTW—is looking back to those halcyon years with a line of jeans that revisits those mid-’90s silhouettes in pink, black, and a blue slightly less inky than Yves Klein’s. There are also jackets, raglan hoodies, bucket hats, and even a great pair of overalls (!!!), plus a number of pieces in patchwork made from upcycled denim. This isn’t exactly another revival fashion play, though: The jeans were simple and great to begin with. Instead, they’re something like the weirdo’s answer to Levi’s 501—a classic silhouette with a perfect, almost universal fit for the guy whose eyes glaze over at the sight of plain old denim. If blue jeans and apple pie are too blasé for you, try pink jeans and lingonberries!